Fragile Things
by Le'letha
Summary: [A "Nightfall" story in two parts.] After the death of one of the flock's hatchlings, a young feral-Hiccup and Toothless fly away to grieve on their own, but end up having to escape from a ship's worth of Vikings.
1. Morning

_**Fragile Things**_

 _ **Le'letha**_

 **Summary:** [A "Nightfall" story in two parts.] After the death of one of the flock's hatchlings, a young feral-Hiccup and Toothless fly away to grieve on their own, but end up having to escape from a ship's worth of Vikings.

ON WITH THE SHOW!

 _ **Morning**_

Smallest is dead.

There is no sound to say so, but the flock knows. For many days now Mother-of-Smallest has been curled around the hatchling who has stayed small when her brothers and sisters grew bigger, and gotten weaker as they grew stronger. Mother-of-Smallest has kept her warm and fed and comforted, and the flock has brought her food for the little one and curled up with them in the nest and talked and sung to them to tell Smallest to live and be strong, but now the silence of _careful_ is a different silence, of _sad sad_.

Hiccup has been perched on a ledge in the sun with Toothless who is half himself and they are dozing and waiting and warm together, but now Toothless lifts his head and smells a different smell of sadness. The dragon-boy resting against his shoulder hears his breath change and his body tense, and he knows that the fear and the waiting are over but it is a _bad_ over.

Still, he whimpers softly, asking _worried scared sad curious doubtful pleading?_

Toothless sighs _regret_ and _sad_ , and his heart-beloved companion crouches in on himself, small and grieving for Smallest, sharing the sorrow of the dragon-flock.

To human eyes, he would be an incongruous presence, a human boy in a nest full of dragons, but this is where he belongs. He knows no other life. The caverns of this dragon nest in the far north are his home; the dragons that live here ruled over by the great king are his family. Hiccup has no understanding that he is human; he has been raised among dragons and by dragons from infancy, accepted as one of them. He is entirely feral, an intelligent wild creature with clever paws, who speaks and mostly thinks as dragons do, obedient to the customs of the nest and subordinate to the flock's Alpha.

He has buried the trauma of his mother's death almost four years ago at human hands deep within himself, and forgotten.

Hiccup thinks of himself as half of a whole, inseparable from Toothless, who is more than a brother and more than a twin; the young dragon and the little boy are a single person, never apart for long. They feel each other's joy and frustration and playfulness, and now they hurt together, crooning sadness and regret for the death of one of their own. Hiccup presses his nose against his companion's scales and hunches his shoulders, hiding, humming a low sad sound, a complex tangle of _regret sad loss grief sad frustration regret sad_ that means tears although dragons do not cry.

Death is a thing that happens but usually there is a reason. Death comes when there are wounds or hunger or age or sickness, but the flock had tried to care for her. Hiccup is not that much bigger than Smallest had been, but he has survived even though he is small and must be cared for by those who love him. He had slept beside Smallest to keep her warm and hidden against the cold that eats at the heart-fire inside. They are family: family keeps you warm in the cold.

But now she is dead, and they grieve, dragon and dragon-boy and all the flock around them as the understanding that does not need sound spreads like the little waves that are born in the rain.

From their perch the feral boy looks down at the cavern full of subdued dragons, crouched quietly on ledges and outcroppings and smooth stones that soak up sunlight, and the heat from the waters deep below, and that are good to lie on. It is strange for even part of the nest to be so still, but Mother-of-Smallest is curled around her weakest hatchling and it is like there is a predator waiting to lunge and claw and bite so dragons must be small and quiet to not draw the hunting eye and hungry jaws.

The dragon-boy tips his head to one side, caught by the idea and briefly distracted. Is the death that puts out heart-fires in Mother-of-Smallest now? Will she bite? Is that why no one will go near her and the hatchlings too young and silly to be quiet and stay away have been taken away to other nests in other caves?

Toothless senses the anxiety running through him and breathes gently at his fur and throat, offering reassurance and comfort even as he asks for it in return.

Hiccup has no good sharp claws like his dragon-kin do, but his soft claws and clever paws are good for petting dragons, so he leans against Toothless and they assure each other through touch and purring that the death has not caught them. Before long Shining Eyes lands on the rock with them and pushes smaller Toothless aside for space. The black dragon growls but there is too much sad to want to fight, and Hiccup climbs onto his partner's back so they can make room for Shining Eyes, who tips his head to look down at the pair and then lowers his nose to be petted too.

For all that he has lived in the nest for many years and is grown by the way dragons consider such things – he can hear the commands of the great Alpha without sound inside his skull – Hiccup is still a child, and in the silence and tension and grief of the nest he pets Shining Eyes for only a moment before he cannot bear it anymore, twisting away and whimpering _frustration sadness fury fly fly us fly go us now now!_ to Toothless, begging to be anywhere else.

The two-who-are-one discovered long ago that it is easier for them to fly together if the dragon-boy has something to hold on to, and together they have invented a harness from leather strips and cords scavenged and stolen from human nests. So when Toothless scrambles to his paws and bounds across the stone and away, out of the nest, his companion stays safely on his shoulders. They fly more swiftly than any others in their nest, more recklessly, and while Hiccup is not afraid of falling they prefer to fly together.

Falling-and-catching is a good game, but now they want only to flee.

A child of dragons, Hiccup spends as much time in the air as he does on the ground, and flight is his lifeblood. The breath of the wind against them as they fly blows tangles of grief and fear from their souls as they tear through the sky, going nowhere in particular, just away, and the rising sun that slashes at them as it chases the stars burns at the hurting inside.

Dragons cannot outrun death, but perhaps they can outrun grief and leave it behind in their wake to snap at a tail that is far out of its reach. Grief is a predator, stalking them; they fly to escape.

Hiccup does not remember how to weep; he lost that reflex after his mother died and he forgot her to protect himself from the pain of that loss. Instead he cries as dragons do, screaming and wailing and yowling to the uncaring waves that hide a strange and different world and the faraway clouds that vanish when the dragon-pair chases them. Beneath his paws and his chest where he crouches astride Toothless' shoulders he can feel as much as hear his partner-companion crying counterpoint, deeper wails and matching howls.

How long they fly, the dragon-boy does not know. Time is meaningless to him – there are days and nights, there is the tide, there are winters. As much a hunter as his dragon-cousins, he notes the passage of whales which sing like water-cousins so are not hunted, and the great migrations of prey-beasts which are. The sun moves in its long flight far above, and in time its brightness shows them the flash of water that means waves breaking on a shore.

It suits Toothless well enough that this should be their destination – they cannot fly forever, at least not yet. He back-wings for a moment above the rocks of the shore, wary and watchful in case there are other dragons here who will object to their presence, or snapping biting traps, or other dangers. When nothing attacks them immediately the black dragon alights in an open space where they cannot be easily ambushed – the trees close by are still too far for an easy pounce.

His companion leaps from Toothless' shoulders to crouch on the ground beside him and snarl, angry a bit now and burning through the hurting inside. The dragon-boy snatches at the closest thing he can find, a small stone, and tosses it away. The over-arm throw that comes so naturally to human children is alien to this feral child, and the stone does not go far.

Still, it is a good distraction – the action displaces a _not-to-eat!_ bug that darts across the reaching paw and startles Hiccup into a leap backwards and an outraged shriek. He lands in the alert and ready stance that comes most naturally to him, with his weight on his back paws and his clever front paws low almost on the ground for balance, ready to leap away or recoil if need be, yowling _surprise_ and _disgust_ – bugs like these are not-to-eat because they bite, and they move like _eels!_

In the rough terrain of caves and cliffs and forest that make up much of the feral boy's environment, he moves as much on all his paws as two, whichever is more convenient from moment to moment. But he likes to have his clever paws free to do things with, and his movements are much like those of his cousins who do not have separate claws and paws from their wings.

The _not-to-eat!_ bug disappears into the ground again, and the little boy snarls after it as it goes, snub nose wrinkling with his distaste, setting his paws down and lifting his head as if he has been victorious over a great enemy.

He is _almost_ quick enough to dodge a swat from Toothless' tailfins as his beloved-companion uses it to knock him over, mocking his triumph.

Hiccup wants a tail. He will have one someday just like he will have wings when they are ready to grow (he knows this for _sure_ ), but if he had one now he could use it to retaliate and knock Toothless over too! Instead he picks himself up from his tumble unharmed and leaps at the offending tail, batting at it and snarling pretend threats. Toothless waves it at him, a tempting target, as he stalks, hiding among the grass as he would from small prey and leaping out in ambush as Toothless snatches the tail away and pounces at the much littler dragon-boy.

Black dragon and feral dragon-boy tussle and wrestle, chasing each other through the field back and forth and all around, yowling and screaming and shrieking. Hiccup scratches his soft-claws down his beloved-companion's nose and Toothless snaps at the offending paw, catching it in a mouth with no teeth and refusing to let go, tugging the dragon-boy off balance to sprawl and scramble in the grass until he can reclaim his paw and smear wet all over one of Toothless' ear-flaps in revenge. He dodges away before Toothless can pin him down and lick him until he is wet all over, forgetting his grief for the moment in the amusement and exertion of playing a chasing game with a partner much bigger and faster than he is.

Whipping a wing around to catch his beloved other-half and trap him, Toothless rumbles and yelps and chatters _amusement_ as Hiccup escapes and dives beneath the black dragon's chest where it is hard to see, trusting Toothless, who is so much bigger and heavier, unconditionally. They play rough and they play fiercely but they have never truly hurt each other. So the black dragon drops onto his side and rolls, snatching the feral little boy and pulling him along so that they end up in a tangled heap near the edge of the forest, laughing breathlessly together in the manner of dragons, in chirps and purrs and thrumming deep in the chest, and the open-mouthed gaping dragon grin that flashes a tongue but does not bare teeth.

They know together that the game is over, relaxing and shifting so that they are curled up comfortably. Toothless coils himself around to make a nest for his beloved-companion to hide in under a wing, but folds it back a moment later so that Hiccup can lean against his side and look all around them. It is always safer to have one of them watching and careful.

Hiccup stares interestedly at the forest as his Toothless- _self_ rests from the flight and the game and the sadness before that, looking for anything that might be fun to play with or amusing to investigate or good to hunt, or that might hunt them. He is as much a predator as any wild animal, but buried beneath his dragonish upbringing there is a human intelligence that thrives on making things and manipulating the world around him, and he is observant of his environment and all it has to offer him.

He knows already that there are _not-to-eat!_ bugs here; he can see one bird's nest that might have very late eggs in it, so there might be more deeper into the woods. There is a burrow for some small creature in the earth beneath a tree; there are plants that look like _that_ and are good-to-eat. The feral boy eats mostly the same diet as a dragon, but his human body needs other nutrients, and instinct encourages him to experiment. He has been ill from such experiments in the past, but he has learned many things from his adoptive family, including how to throw back up something that is not good-to-eat.

His whistle of _look you look beloved interest alert amusement interest_ mixed with the chattering _want want want_ makes one of Toothless' ear-flaps lift and turn towards him. Hiccup slides an amused look at him and makes a humming buzzing noise that the bigger dragon recognizes as his companion's mimicry of _bees!_

They readily associate bees with hives and hives with honey, and both like the sweet sticky taste of it. But while Toothless is not bothered by bees as long as they do not get in his eyes or mouth, he knows his dragon-boy is vulnerable to them.

 _No!_ Toothless snorts at him.

Hiccup whines a _please?_ but the black dragon merely glares another refusal. He is not in the mood to spend the rest of the day out-flying bees or hearing his beloved-companion whimper over the pain of stings.

Hiccup grumbles, but does not pursue the possibility for now. Instead he darts away to the rocks at the shore, climbing across them to investigate just as he had scanned the forest's edge. Toothless half-closes his eyes, watching protectively and taking joy in his beloved-companion's enjoyment in exploration. They have never doubted that they are two halves of a soul, for in so many ways they are the same. Toothless dreams of traveling, chasing the horizon and wandering to new places, and he knows one day they will go together. They will do and see wonderful things.

Perched atop a crag, Hiccup freezes for a moment, and then flattens himself to the stone. His body reflects _interest_ and a bit of _fear_ and _uncertainty_ , and Toothless' head comes up in response to his partner's signals. He whistles soft questioning sounds, _you you worry you threat? concern you?_

His dragon-boy glances back at him, and gestures _you come-here-you hurry interest anxious look look you come-here_.

Staying low to the ground as if hunting, in response to Hiccup's anxiety, Toothless slinks cautiously to his beloved's side, seeing what he sees.

At once the black dragon bristles, growling. There is a _ship!_

They understand ships. Ships are things of humans, because humans cannot fly, so they float on the ocean in ships of wood.

And _humans_ are the enemy. Humans are trappers and killers of dragons, hunters of their flock and their family and their kin.

Ships and humans go together, Toothless reasons, so if there is a ship there are humans, and if there are humans they are in danger here.

He sees absolutely no contradiction between his fear of humans and the presence of the feral dragon-boy at his paws. To Toothless, and to the flock, Hiccup is a dragon, not a human. That his body is human is not important.

Toothless is well aware that of the two of them, the black dragon is more cautious – Hiccup is _always_ putting his nose into something he should not, and it is _good_ that they are a pair together, because who else would rescue him if his dragon-companion was not there? So he is not very surprised that Hiccup is now looking at the ship with interest rather than worry and humming a soft and thoughtful _want maybe curious want us maybe me you together us want want_.

 _Threat!_ Toothless whistles a warning.

His dragon-boy chirps back _maybe maybe look you look_.

Toothless looks. It is still a ship.

But, he realizes after he has looked some more, there are no humans. The ship is perched on the land like a water-cousin, ungainly and off-balance, with the waves pulling at it to bring it back where it belongs. But it has claws of its own made of binding rope clinging to trees and stones that hold it in place, so that its chest is on land and its tail in the sea. He cannot hear any human noises – and humans are loud – and when he lifts his head to smell the wind he cannot smell humans close by, only ocean and the strange sharp smell of the ship, wet metal and fire-ash and old water.

 _C'mon,_ Hiccup whistles an invitation, clambering across the rocks towards the distant ship before Toothless can catch him and stop him. When he knows he is a safe distance away out of reach he peeks back over his shoulder and yelps a teasing challenge that means _can't-catch-me_! before dropping out of sight behind a stone and reemerging a moment later, sneaking towards the ship as if stalking prey that may look over and see him and flee.

The black dragon is _less_ reckless than the dragon-boy who is his other half, but only barely. He takes up the dare and the game willingly, keeping his body low to the ground and his wings folded in tight, careful of the long tail that makes him so maneuverable in the air, and finding hiding places of his own.

Sliding carefully and quietly into the water at the edge of the too-steep shore, he advances step by step, wading through the shallows and prowling towards the ship. Off to his side he catches a glimpse of his Hiccup- _beloved-self_ shadowing him. They have hunted together before and this is a game they know how to play, moving in staggered advances and careful glances, keeping each other and their prey in view but staying where it cannot see them.

They have never hunted a ship before, though.

Close to the ship there is nowhere for dragon or dragon-boy to hide; the beach is open and empty except for the ship. It goes against Toothless' instincts to approach the ship-prey, motionless and dead-thing that it is, but Hiccup has no such hesitations. As he advanced on their target he had climbed momentarily into a tree to watch it from higher up, and there are still no humans nearby.

Hiccup is not afraid of dead ships, only live humans. He knows only one good thing of humans – they make clever things that dragons cannot, and they are good to steal from. The dragon-boy is a proper little thief, and he is eager to see what new-and-different things the ship might have for him to play with. Sometimes his kin attack ships that have intruded into their territory just as they would fight off stranger-dragons; sometimes they raid human nests for food when winters are bad, or because it is fun sometimes to tempt danger and fly quickly in and away before humans can attack them, or when there might be interesting toys to steal.

In this way the feral boy has acquired many things he could not otherwise make. He cannot tan leather or preserve furs from the hides of the animals his dragon-family hunt, when they are easier to catch than fish. He retains the ability to sew, although he does not remember being taught, but cannot make either needle or thread. He loves to draw, and considers the rough paper that humans can make a wondrous thing. It preserves his sketches longer than the stone of the nest, as it can be hidden safely: dragons are less likely to walk across it.

He treasures the knife he picked up during a raid – he cannot forge metal, although he can keep the blade sharp and clean, free from the rust that is the death of metal. Metal bleeds, and its blood is poison. Dragons bitten deeply by traps with the death of metal on them die even when freed, and therefore Hiccup despises the smell of it, understanding that the death of metal is also the death of his kin.

Eager and curious, he pads out of hiding and into the open without hesitation, approaching the ship as he would a dragon-cousin much bigger than him who is one of his flock-mates but who might be reluctant to be climbed on. He knows with perfect confidence that Toothless will watch over him, and directs all his attention towards the beached ship. It takes him only a moment to realize that its flanks are too high for him to leap to – he is a small dragon-child, and there are no good rocks for him to climb.

Turning back to where he knows his other half is waiting, he whines, pleading and inviting. He does not try to hide that he is eager to explore the ship, but the open beach all around him with the unfamiliar presence of the ship and its promise of humans is a threat that make him feel very alone.

 _Alone_ is alien to him, more so than the ship.

Reluctantly, but preferring to be with his partner-companion – they are better together, they know – Toothless emerges from his hiding place and joins him in the shadow of the human ship. It reassures both of them to be in contact again, and in a leap the black dragon takes off and hovers over the ship, looking for a good landing place – or a potential ambush.

Ships are strange to land on, and the dead wood feels odd beneath Toothless' paws. He shifts them uncomfortably, looking around. This is a smaller ship than some they have seen on the great northern ocean, but he knows he cannot see all of it – when he landed he felt that there was a cave below.

Fascinated, his dragon-boy companion leaps to the ship-ground to feel the cave below for himself, vocalizing his excitement at the adventure in lilts and cries and chattering sounds, yelping and purring and humming. He wonders how to get into the cave, but a moment later turns away, reluctant to be caught in a place that might be like a trap. It is his role in the flock to help his kin – and even dragon-cousins not of the flock – escape from traps set by humans, freeing them with his clever paws that can do things other paws cannot. He has developed a deep aversion to such things, and hates them with all the fire in his heart.

Instead he darts around the unfamiliar environment, leaping from surface to surface, coiling around the trees with huge leaves with strange patterns planted in the ship, and tapping at things that are metal but cannot be removed. In the tail of the ship there are many things hidden under a covering like a wing, too many to look at all at once, and there are so many other things on the ship to see and encounter that he cannot pause to look at those under the not-a-wing, although he marks them in his memory as he had marked the bees, as something to come back to.

There are many sharp metal things that are like his precious knife but are too big to use, so he ignores them, sniffing at bits of fabric and fur that smell strongly of humans. Lessons so strongly taught that they have become instinct make him recoil from these – in the nest hatchlings are taught the smell of humans from such things, and the scent evokes the memory of many repetitions of snarls and cries of _danger avoid threat danger fear warning-of-enemy_.

He pulls on a big fur hanging from the flank of the ship to see if it will move and is taken by surprise when it does, collapsing onto him and smothering the little boy in thick fur and suffocating human-stink.

Hiccup shrieks in surprise more than pain, flailing. In fear he uses his clever paws as his cousins do, to slash and strike and tear, rather than thinking to grab hold of the fur and pull it away; it is in fear that Hiccup is most a dragon. His thrashing and clawing succeeds only in entangling him further, small body lost in the unfamiliar darkness of the fur.

Toothless comes to his rescue, roaring at the fur as if it were a living thing that might retreat when threatened, but only for a moment. Snapping out his fangs, he grabs an edge of the fur and backs away, shaking his head to make the fur thrash and snarling deep in his throat.

Struggling free, Hiccup screams his own fury and leaps to the attack. He thinks this time, filling his paws with the fur and hanging on tight so that Toothless can rip and tear it, shredding through it like prey. As his companion pounces on the fur and wrestles with it, the black dragon summons up fire that is not blasting-fire and scorches holes through it. When the edges of the new holes have cooled, Hiccup snatches at them and tries to tear it into smaller pieces.

When they have properly defeated it, Toothless catches the shredded wreckage up in his jaws and prances triumphantly across the broad flat back of the ship towards its flanks, crowing his pride in their victory. Hiccup hides under a piece of the ship near the covering wing, huffing in indignation and wrinkling his nose at the stink of human furs still on him. There is nothing here to brush against to rasp the stink away – everything smells of humans or of the ship.

He tries anyway, dipping his shoulder to the wood of the ship and rolling. Half-upside down, he watches Toothless shaking the defeated fur into smaller scraps, and Hiccup purrs at the sight.

From the ground of the ship he can see more of the hidden things, and one of them catches his attention. The little boy sits up, slipping out from under the piece of the ship and ducking under the wing.

Amidst the many other wonderful things that he does not recognize or does not understand, there is something he does.

It is a piece of paper, which is good to draw on, sticking out from another thing that holds it like paws on small prey. It flutters slightly in the sea wind when Hiccup lifts the covering wing away, tempting him from its hiding place on top of a round wooden thing that echoes when he taps it curiously. When he reaches up to grab hold of the paper and pull it down to the ground of the ship, it resists him. The thing like capturing paws pulls back and tries to keep it.

Hiccup wants the paper. He has found it and he wants it, so now it is his if he can take it. Retreating for a moment, he thinks, planning a new attack, and attack he does, leaping at the thing that is keeping the paper from him. His pounce knocks it to the ground of the ship, revealing that it is not a solid thing, but many papers all together.

It falls open and there is _magic_.

 _Magic_ , because Hiccup is the only one in his world who draws, but here are many drawings, and in such bright colors even in the shadow of the wing that he turns away momentarily, looking at it from the side of his eyes in case it falls into his blind spot and disappears. It strikes him silent and still, all his signals and all his sounds lost, at a loss for even how to call to his Toothless- _beloved._ What of it, the death of the fur that so pleases Toothless? What of it, next to _this_?

When he reaches out to touch it, he does so as if it might sting like bees when he reaches for the honey in the hive. There have never been bees in paper before, but this is so much paper it is something else entirely, and there has never been _magic_ in paper before.

The colors coil like eels and cut like claws, as bright and real as dragon-scales. And in his wonder he realizes that there are many papers all together, like dragons in a nest, and perhaps – all different, just like dragons? All so colorful, so wonderful?

Hiccup needs this thing. He turns to tell Toothless of his discovery, to share the magic with the one he loves best.

But it is while they are so separated that a human climbs over the side of the ship.

Toothless freezes with the fur in his jaws, shocked. With the stink of the fur in his nose and the distraction of it he has not smelled or heard the human approach, and it carries a dead thing that smells of prey-blood to mask its scent. Dropping the fur, the dragon tries to back away, but the flank of the ship is behind him, blocking his retreat.

His instinct is to leap and fly, but his dragon-boy is half-hidden beneath the wide wing in the tail of the ship. Shock is fading from Hiccup's body, replaced with _fear_ , and he is staring now at the intruder, still and silent in the presence of a predator that has not yet seen him. Toothless will not, he _cannot_ , leave Hiccup in danger.

Instead he growls, threatening, and flares his wings to seem bigger. The human makes noises and moves in ways that are _angry_ and _surprised_ and _scared_ but _angry_ is stronger, and he drops the dead prey and points a thing at Toothless that the dragon recognizes as a weapon that flies.

A threat to one is a threat to both, and Hiccup emerges from his hiding place, shrieking threats of his own. He too recognizes the weapon as dangerous, knows that Toothless will not fly away without him, and is willing to put himself in danger to be a distraction so they can reunite and escape together. The magic is forgotten – there is a human, there is a weapon-that-flies, and it is threatening Toothless!

When the human looks over his shoulder at the dragon-boy, its movements and body language change; it moves _angry_ and _confused_ and _tense_ but then there is _shock_ and more _confusion_.

Hiccup has not been this close to a human in three years and more, and he sees nothing familiar in this one; he recognizes the man only as a threat, an enormous thick-furred predator-beast that is hunting them, and is terrified.

The death that has taken Smallest has followed them; death is a predator that is tracking them! He will not let it have them; they will _fight!_

The colossus reaches out a paw towards him, making loud sounds. And it _stares_. Its jaw opens and it shows teeth.

To the dragon-boy all of this means _attack_. The staring is hostile – dragons stare when they are trying to intimidate a rival – the voice is threatening; when the man moves towards him the dragon-boy scrambles away, careful to avoid being tangled in the wing, trying to keep his eyes on the approaching human danger and Toothless beyond him.

But the human cannot easily watch both of them, so Hiccup yowls, competing with the human sounds, baring his teeth and raising a paw to swipe, curling his soft-claws as if they were dangerous and sharp, ready to bite and claw if the human comes too close.

He holds the man's attention long enough for Toothless to leap into the air, bounding across the ship and bowling the human over. But Hiccup was watching for that and at once he is on his dragon-companion's back and they are over the side of the ship and away.

Almost as soon as he begins his dive to the shore the black dragon tries to stop in midair, hovering for only a moment before he beats his wings to take them into the air and higher instead of down to the ground where they could hide. Other humans have emerged from the forest and are approaching, shouting. A flock is always more dangerous than a single dragon alone; humans must be much the same. A sharp turn takes them into clear air over the ocean and out of range of an easy shot, with Hiccup settled into the harness and panting with fear.

They know that humans do not fly, so they put all their strength and speed into flight, leaving the roars and snarls of angry humans far below them as Toothless flips his tail under him and races up and up and up, soaring almost straight up into the air where they are safe.

Only when the island is a distant small thing like a pebble on the ground below them do they stop, hovering high above many clouds. Both dragon and dragon-boy are gasping for breath in the thinner air of distant sky, with exertion, and with the rush of battle and fear.

Tangling his paws in the flying-with and lowering his face to the back of Toothless' skull, Hiccup sighs the huffing sound of a dragon's sigh, a shallow sound in the thin air, crooning _fly fear surprise fly danger threat fear anger fly_ and the chirp of _up up up up_. Beneath him, Toothless rumbles in agreement and irritation at being ambushed.

 _Hurt?_ Hiccup whistles, low and worried. He relaxes only when his dragon-companion purrs and rolls an eye back at him, questioning silently.

The dragon-boy considers for only a moment. Back in the air, he is fearless, and it irks him to have been so easily chased away from an adventure he had been enjoying. Away from the human, and with both of them unharmed, the threat seems much less.

When Toothless turns his head to look homeward, Hiccup yelps _no!_ and gestures _down_ back towards the island.

The bigger dragon sets his wings into a steady glide, bringing the pair back down into air that is easier to breathe. He considers it, as they fly. Toothless is not ready to go home yet either.

It is dangerous, to return to a place where humans are, but they have already once turned their tail to an enemy and fled. They fled from the nest, fearing the death of Smallest, escaping from grief, and they flew so quickly and so well that grief could not hunt them down and pounce on them. In the nest now there will be hurting; sadness has made a nest in the minds of the flock. It has taken the shape of Smallest and the flock will hold it gently in their jaws because it has her shape and Smallest was beloved.

Toothless would rather prowl alert for humans than for grief that hunts dragons and hurts them. They can see humans coming; humans are loud. Grief is quiet, and it sneaks.

Perhaps it is foolish, but they will be foolish together.

From his shoulders the black dragon can sense his partner's delight when he sets a course back down towards the island instead of back home, catching an easy wind that sends them in a long spiral around and away from the beach where the ship is with its humans.

* * *

There are humans hunting in the deeper woods, concealed from quick-running prey-beasts but obvious from above when they fly over silent and careful, watching. The humans do not see them even when the dragons dive between the trees and land quietly, following them and tracking them as they track prey. The pair pretends briefly that they are hunting humans, which is not a good thing to do. Humans are enemies, but not prey; dragons do not eat humans. It is a stalking game without a pounce at the end, not even on a waving tail or a sleeping nose, and the chase is not as good without the leap.

When the dragon-pair returns to the field they had landed in before, Toothless is puzzled by his companion's behavior – as they fish in the shallows off the shore and scavenge in the edge of the woods, Hiccup continues to climb to the rocks to watch the ship.

When he whistles a question the dragon-boy shakes it away like flies and turns instead to the problem of the beehive, still temptingly nested in and around the trunk of a tree but betrayed by its humming, a purr that will so easily become a snarl.

Toothless is not fooled, but he will let his beloved-companion keep his secret for now.

Only once do humans come too close, as the pair splashes in the water, pouncing at fish. They are so loud, shouting to each other as they stumble through the rocks and trample across the sandy gravel of the shore, that dragon and dragon-boy are concealed in the trees long before they can see the humans.

There are two of them, walking together but clumsy under the weight of holding-things on their backs; when one pushes the other, water splashes from a holding-thing and makes the fur on its shoulders wet. The wet one shouts; its voice is angry but its body is not, which is confusing, especially in a probable enemy. The dragon-pair would be alert to a dragon that spoke that way until they knew more and could tell which message was the true one and which the deception.

The holding-things that are holding water are heavy on them, and they walk like they are about to fall, staggering on back legs that do not look balanced enough to support them. It makes them slow.

Hiccup is much less interested in the humans on the shore – they are leaving, Toothless is watching them, and surely nothing so heavy-laden and awkward could catch him and his beloved-companion – than he is in the still-buzzing beehive. He cannot see it all, much of it is hidden in the tree, but he can hear it, and the memory of the pain of stings is far away.

Besides, there is a good trick to stealing from bees. Dragons like honey and the crunch of honeycomb, and a flock-mate had taught them the trick after Hiccup had come home on the back of his Toothless- _self_ , licking at many stings that made his paws hot inside and nipping the thorns of them from skin tight around that fire. Hiccup thinks of her as Patience, because that is how she hunts. She does not stalk or chase but waits for the right time to strike.

The feral boy still cannot breathe fire however he tries, so he will need Toothless' help to make the trick work. The trick is in the chill of the autumn and of the sun retreating from the sky, and in smoke from dragon-fire; it is a trick of cleverness and speed and watching the bees.

 _Bees!_ Hiccup pesters, buzzing as they do and rolling to bat at Toothless' nose, chirping _please please_ and purring in anticipation of the honey the hive will yield.

When Toothless rolls his eyes but agrees the dragon-child scavenges among the forest floor for damp leaves that will smolder but not flame, creating a nest of them on the ground beneath the hive, moving carefully and offering them no threat. Bees are sleepy and slow in the cold; they have no fires inside and fire is strange to them. Fire will kill them, but smoke will make them sleepier still.

The bigger dragon breathes a soft huff of fire that is not battle-fire at the nest of debris, and his companion tosses dirt at it to muffle the flame until it releases only smoke from the half-buried seed of fire.

The trick begins as a waiting trick, waiting for smoke, but soon it will become a flying-quickly trick. Hiccup leaps to his place on Toothless' shoulders, winding his paws into the flying-with, and they tense to pounce. The black dragon's tail waves in anticipation however hard he tries to keep it still and Hiccup can feel the twitch of muscles; he too trembles, ready to leap and strike and fly.

They would not have thought of this trick – they are too reckless too often, but Patience is a good hunter of bees because she knows how to watch and wait.

When the smoke is fading away and the bees that crawl on the outside of the hive are slow and not flying away when they emerge, the two-who-are-one prepare to pounce.

Toothless plans their escape, holding the path upwards and away in his mind, and closes his eyes and his jaw so that bees will not hide in his mouth and sting his soft tongue. He instinctively seals his nostrils closed as he would when diving for fish, and on his back he feels Hiccup press his nose against the scales of the dragon's neck, hiding his face and his body beneath his own head-fur and the furs that he wears to stay warm and protect himself.

 _Now!_ Toothless chirps, a quick sound of immediacy and the lightning-strike of a pounce, and leaps.

His claws knock the part of the hive that is outside the tree, tearing it from the branch, but he does not snatch the broken honeycomb or wait for the bees to be angry – he takes off up into the sky to outrun them, as fast as his wings can go, knocking away the first wave of angry nest-defenders with his broad-finned tail. The scales of it are too strong for bees to sting, and the few that chase him find no soft skin exposed.

It is a waiting trick again when they are far away from the angry bees. Hiccup peeks out from his makeshift hiding place when he feels his dragon-companion slow into a hover, the pulsing of fanning wings a familiar signal. He chuckles a dragon's laugh when he realizes that they have escaped without stings, purring _good happy us good good_ and flicking open and closed his paws in satisfaction, comparing his memories of painful stings to the unmarked skin. They were not good at this trick when Patience taught it to them, because they did not like to wait for smoke to make bees tired, but they learned because stings _hurt_.

While they wait for the bees to tire and give up and forget, they survey the island from above again, marking the activities of the humans in their hunting. Many of them have returned to the ship, so Toothless is surprised that Hiccup is still so interested in it. Unless there are many flock-mates all around them in a raid, the pair avoids humans even more carefully than they avoid angry bees.

Whatever great secret this is that draws his beloved dragon-boy companion back towards the ship, Toothless will not let him keep it for much longer.

It grows dark, as they fly for the waiting trick and for the joy of it, and the brightest and bravest stars are venturing back into the still-lit sky when they return to the broken hive.

The fragment of honeycomb lies on the ground where Toothless struck it down, and the bees have given up on it. Bees are too small to carry broken pieces back to the hive, and they had no enemy to fight, not even the tiny ants that are trying to steal the honey for themselves.

They split the honeycomb, brushed free of ants, between them. Toothless laps his piece up when Hiccup offers it to him and crunches it with enjoyment – it is a bigger piece, because Toothless is a bigger dragon and needs more food. This they know. Hiccup curls up at his side and licks at the comb, slowly and carefully. Toothless smells _thinking_ on him, hears it in the beat of his heart and the rhythm of his breath, sees it in the set of his shoulders, in the shadows over his eyes that are watching invisible things, and in the tension in his jaw.

 _You-beloved you you love-you what you worried?_ Toothless trills. Hiccup is quiet when he is _thinking_ ; his signals are hidden. While Toothless loves that his beloved-companion is clever it bothers him, sometimes, that it is when Hiccup is _thinking_ that Toothless cannot understand him in a single glance.

Hiccup points with his nose at the honeycomb and croons _sad_.

Toothless hums, softly, wondering. Honey is a good thing and a favorite of them both. It makes them happy, to hunt it and eat it together; the black dragon purrs involuntarily.

The association between the taste and the feeling is older than either of them can remember; it is as indefinable as air but real as stone. It means _each other_ , it means _you and me together_ , because the taste of it is forever linked with the first time infant and hatchling had met. The nameless hatchling who was _me_ inside and would be called the sound _Toothless_ by his human foster-mother had been drawn to the sweet smell of honey. He had found it attached to a small hatchling who was strange but also warm and soft and… _right_.

The baby had reached out to him and offered to share, and the hatchling who was only _me_ had realized that this too was _me_.

 _Sad why sad you sad?_ Toothless asks now.

Hiccup gestures _small_ , holding one paw above the ground to suggest a little dragon. He means _Smallest_. He would have brought this treat back to her, if she still lived.

The little boy misses her now, past the exhaustion of waiting and fear and the first sharp bite of her death. Even when new hatchlings are born they are almost always bigger than he is, or they do not stay smaller for long, and he had enjoyed having someone smaller than himself to care for. A healthy dragon-flock is a good place to be a child, born human or born dragon. No hatchling is ever alone, and the freedom of the nest that is the domain of the great king is theirs. They are safe and protected under the care of their mother and their mother's mate and the dragons who love them best, whoever is closest and willing to play.

Hiccup is small, he is young, but he is an adult of the flock. It is his role too to protect and care for hatchlings, but it is strange sometimes to be smaller than a newborn. For his whole life he has been protected by dragons much bigger than he is, and part of him wants to be big enough to protect others in the same way. He has no wide wings that hatchlings can hide beneath, no tail to coil around them and for them to chase. Toothless does, but while they are a single self it is not the _same_.

So he had been drawn to Smallest, who almost fit under his jaw the way he hides against the warm purring throats of bigger dragons. He had made her a flying-with of her own like Toothless wears, but smaller like she was smaller, when she had looked at the original with interest and amusement, and when she chewed through one of the cords he had fixed it for her. He had drawn shapes all over her nest, shapes that in his mind told a story, and the dragon-boy and his Toothless-companion had danced those stories for her to watch.

Together they had wandered away to find interesting things, flowers that did not grow in the nest and a prey-beast killed quickly to protect the rich black fur, and they had fetched them back home for Smallest to see. The feral boy had brought to her nest a clever thing he is working on that does not yet work, fitting the shed and broken claws of dragons to his own soft-claws so that they will be sharp instead, and she had watched him wondering and baffled as he experimented, looking at Toothless' paws and trying to recreate them.

And she had died anyway.

She had been his friend, but now he cannot bring her the honeycomb that they hunted away from the bees so cleverly.

When Toothless wraps a front leg around him and breathes into his fur he smells like honey over the deeper scent of _dragon_ and the distinct scent of _Toothless_ ; Hiccup knows that Toothless can smell more things than he can, but then Hiccup's nose is very small and it can only smell big smells. It is enough.

They hum together a sound that can only be described as _melancholy_ , a sound of grief that is real but must be survived and conquered. The life they lead does not have the luxury of denying the reality and the power of death. They can only outrun it as long as possible, be wary of its traps and wise to its poisons, and fight back when they can.

The honeycomb is bittersweet, but sweet still.

* * *

 _To be continued._


	2. Evening

_**Evening**_

* * *

Toothless pushes his dragon-boy companion over with his nose and puts a paw on him to hold him there, insisting that he explain. _Threat!_ he whistles, a sharp snap of a sound. _That_ – he looks over in the direction of the ship - _fear danger fear not-like_ so then, he wonders _why why why you_ and he purrs as an example before glaring at his dragon-boy and reiterating _threat no no no!_

The feral boy cries a low wondering sound, making an unfamiliar shape in the space between them with his paws, and chatters _want-want-want-want_ , the sound of a predator eager to pounce.

When Toothless removes his paw and allows him to rise, Hiccup scouts around on the forest floor, searching. He clears leaves and debris from an open space, and draws in the earth, wild patterns and strange shapes, agitated.

The language they speak is perfectly suited for emotion and sensation, and for warning flock-mates of dangers or alerting them to prey, for begging permission and snarling threats. It is fluent in the things that matter most to dragons, but it is not good at communicating new things. Somewhere deep inside himself, Hiccup wonders if there is a better way to do so, although he does not know what it is. He stopped speaking human words when there was no one left to remind him to do so, and no one to speak them with. Time and disuse have mostly erased his ability to use them, and will continue to do so, and certainly he would fare no better speaking human words to dragons than he does speaking as dragons do.

Still, he often becomes frustrated when he finds himself unable to explain an idea he can clearly imagine, but cannot speak of. He can show what he means, sometimes, but he has so many ideas that cannot be drawn or made, gestured or imitated or modeled in actions.

Eventually the bigger dragon understands that there is a thing on the ship, a thing with drawings, and that it is interesting and wonderful. He can tell from Hiccup's sketches in the earth, visible in the last embers of sun fire and the triumphant moon, that it is not a big thing, and from the way his companion moves and the sounds he makes – wondering and amazed and eager – that it is an exciting thing.

He can see his companion's desire to return and hunt it again, like a hunger but for something that cannot be eaten. And for love – for love, for Toothless would do much more than hunt a mysterious wonderful thing kept on a ship of humans, should it please the little dragon who is half himself – he cannot refuse.

 _Patience,_ Toothless warns his beloved-companion gently, easing the rebuke with a sliding sideways glance that invites conspiracy, as if they were planning a trick on a flock-mate, to thieve a toy from a nest not their own or food from beneath an unwary paw. He whistles the hunting command _wait-to-pounce_ and looks upward as if counting the stars. He is not – Toothless can no more count beyond the two of _this_ and _that_ , or _you_ and _me,_ than can Hiccup – but he can see the difference between the few bright ones that are visible now and the many more that will be visible later.

They can hunt in the darkness of the night as readily as they can during the day, but humans can see in the dark barely at all. Although they do so rarely, when the flock raids human nests they attack by night, because then humans are sleeping and then blind in the dark so they cannot see the raiders coming or chase them when they flee.

Toothless himself can see almost as clearly in the dark as he can in the day, and even when the stars are lost behind deep storm clouds or in a cave where the sky is far away and hidden, if he looks very hard.

Soon, though, the anticipation of the hunt is stronger than his caution, and with his dragon-boy on his shoulders Toothless leaps into the air, savoring the first strong downbeat of flight.

Invisible in the darkness, they soar, sensing the winds that change with the turn of the tide and the cooler air of evening. When they pass high above the great fire that humans have lit on the shore, the warmth of it stirs the air, creating a brief thermal that carries them up in an easy gliding spiral, floating like in strong ocean waves by an island shore.

There are many humans near the fire, but Toothless cannot see any on the ground of the ship. There is no movement there. He circles, gliding so that his wingbeats will not make a sound until they are so close to the waves that the waves are louder than the dragon-pair landing on the ship. Now the feeling of the cave below the wood is expected, and the black dragon is careful not to let his steps echo.

Hiccup is smaller and lighter, but he mimics his dragon-self just the same, moving cautiously. They communicate to each other only in gesture and expression, now; they would not speak aloud with enemies so close.

Despite his anticipation, Hiccup is acutely aware of the humans on the shore, and it goes against all he knows to turn his back on an enemy without watching it carefully first.

As silent as the fall of a leaf, he pads to the flank of the ship, setting his paws on the edge and rearing up to look over it at them, wary and on guard.

Humans have no fires inside like dragons do, but they have made a fire because they cannot see in the dark. Perhaps they are cold, too – the dragon-boy can feel the warmth of the great fire on his skin, and it burns in his eyes as their shadows pass between him and the flames. And they burn their prey, which is strange to the feral child – he recognizes the smell of burned meat, for dragons burn kills sometimes, if they are hunting with their fire, but most things he eats raw.

They are terribly _strange_ creatures, to his wild eyes. Their movements are unbalanced and clumsy as they walk and stumble on their back paws, and they wave their front paws wildly. If the gestures have meaning the dragon-boy does not understand them.

How do they hunt, so awkwardly? They cannot leap or pounce, and they cannot _fly!_

Hiccup cannot even imagine what it would be like, to not be able to fly. To never leave the ground –! It would be like being trapped, held down and tangled in the earth.

They move like bears and they sound like seagulls, and it is frightening. Humans have fur the way bears do, thick and heavy down their backs and around their bodies, and on their heads and their throats all down their chests. All the dragons of Hiccup's flock have scales. _He_ has fur, yes, so there must be dragons with fur somewhere, but it remains unusual enough to be strange. It makes the humans seem more like bears, and bears are dangerous – the dragon-boy knows not to approach them. They are territorial and aggressive and unpredictable.

Seagulls are stupid, raucous and foolish thieves, loud and meaningless in their cries. The sounds the humans are making now, all together and over and over, are as discordant and harsh. Hiccup is used to dragon-sounds, and while dragons do sing in that their voices use many elements of song – trills and lilts, chirps and hums, thrums and rumbles – they do not sing all together, although their voices often merge together by chance into the sounds of the nest.

He is not sure what smells are human smells and which are ship smells; the odors are all mixed up together like the scent of a dragon-flock with its nest. Perhaps, it occurs to him, a ship can be a human nest. With his small nose he can pick up a sharp biting scent he does not know, and blood, which he does; a reek that must be human skin because it smells like furs worn by humans, and the rust and metal of their weapons and tools. Other scents he has never encountered before. None of it smells anything like his home and his family. The little boy breathes in the air to taste it, and wrinkles his nose in dislike.

The fear they evoke goes beyond how alien they are to him. Humans make no sense, except as enemies. They are stupid – they do not talk except in loud harsh sounds – but they make such clever things! They travel in flocks and live in nests, but they do not listen to each other – they do not see signals. They are clumsy on their back feet – a predator that cannot pounce – but they are dangerous.

They are setters of traps and hunters of dragons. They are the _enemy,_ hostile and distant and intimidating.

Hiccup much prefers his dragon-family.

Because the humans are far away, they are less interesting than the mysterious and fascinating things still hidden on the ship, and Hiccup turns away from the fire on the shore.

 _C'mon_ , he gestures, _look look interest us look good good here_.

He and Toothless squirm under the covering wing and pull things out onto the ground of the ship to look at them. Hiccup is searching for the colorful papers, at first, but then there are so many _other_ things to investigate and he is delighted to be so distracted.

They push over empty holding things, gently so as not to make a noise, and put their noses and their paws into full ones. Some of them contain things that smell edible, and soon their contents are scattered across the ship's broad back as dragon and dragon-boy tear off pieces and eat them, curious about the unfamiliar tastes, sharing their opinions back and forth in the expressions they make and the movements of their bodies.

Hiccup does not like the meat that is seawater-salty and hard to chew, but Toothless does, pulling it out of the holding thing in a great long cord like rope or the insides of prey. It follows him across the ship as he backs away, chewing on it enthusiastically until he has a piece that fits in his mouth. The dragon-boy is much more pleased by a holding-thing full of something that tastes like fruit but is a sticky mush like honey. He smears it across his paws and licks it off them again, staining his face with it. Neither of them is particularly interested in a kind of food that has a shell on the outside, like a crab but not so hard, but it tears apart easily, and it is soft inside, like crabs. A similar food has nuts hiding inside it, Hiccup is surprised to find when he shreds another piece.

A small holding-thing has something like dark sand but which smells _very_ strongly and _very_ strange, and Hiccup covers it back up as soon as he opens it. Even one sniff of it burns in his nose like fire and tickles like sneezes.

Some of the holding-things are made of wood and cannot be opened without breaking them and making a noise that will draw the attention of humans, so those they leave alone.

There are many, many, many furs. Hiccup drags them out of their pile like hatchlings in a nest and spreads them out as if making a nest to sleep in, running his paws through their softness. He dips his shoulder to the ground to roll and squirm across them so that they brush against his face. He would purr with the enjoyment of it if they were not being sneaky, but he finds Toothless in the dark and drops his jaw in a smile to show his joy.

Toothless puts his nose to the nearest fur and rubs his cheek against it, shoving it across the ship-ground as he goes from one to another, exploring the different textures and scents of the many furs.

All of the metal things are still too big to use, which frustrates the dragon-boy. His knife is one of the most useful things he has ever found, and it would be good to have another one.

But the metal is forgotten in an instant when he finds the wonderful thing of paper and colors again, hidden in another pile of furs.

 _You!_ he gestures, catching Toothless' attention and summoning him away from the rope of salty meat, which the dragon is trying to tear another piece from. _This!_ and his body and the sharpness of his gestures reflects _urgency_ and _fascination_ and _excitement_.

They settle down in the moonlight and the edges of the fire on the shore to look at it together. Hiccup paws at it to open it and show the different papers – there are many drawings! – and beside him where their shoulders touch he feels Toothless go tense and still and fascinated.

He is pleased to find it again, but most of all to show it to his beloved-companion and know that Toothless can share his amazement and wonder.

Even in the dark it is beautiful. The drawings are still meaningless, and the colors muted in the night, but some of them shine like metal with the firelight on the shore and the moon above. Toothless places his nose against it in a tentative nudge, and Hiccup brushes his paws across the surface. He is surprised to find that there are shallow impressions in the paper like scars across scales, or the marks of dragon-claws torn through the wood of a tree. Even the scars on the paper make shapes, invisible to eyes but revealed under his touch!

It is not paper, not really, he realizes, now that in the dark his paws and nose are more important than his eyes, but something else, soft like the bare skin of prey under fur, and with a similar scent under sharper smells that _might_ be the colors. Toothless touches the end of his tongue to it, gently and curiously, not as if it were a thing to eat but as if it were a hatchling to be licked and comforted. _Paper_ , to the feral boy, means pieces of a rougher material, one by one by one, scraps stolen and hoarded and then chased around the nest when the wings of flock-kin startle it into flight, which is sometimes fun because of the chasing and sometimes irritating because he does not think that paper is supposed to fly. It should stay on the ground where he puts it so he can find it and play with it again.

But _this_ is so far outside anything he has ever seen that he cannot think of it as paper.

It is _magic_.

* * *

Ragnar cannot shake the memory of the strange creature from earlier, even hours later in the company of the rest of the crew, with a bonfire lit and fresh venison roasting over it, not that Thorfinn can cook without the most part of the fat running into the flames and the rest of the meat burnt or dry or raw. Even with the laughter of the others echoing off the sides of the ship (because everyone, even Thorfinn, knows that Thorfinn cannot cook), Ragnar sees only the memory, not the fire.

He is still not quite sure what he had seen. It had been something out of a story, some saga where things are different, or a nightmare. A child, yes, he is fairly sure, but crouched like an animal, and not pretending the way his nephews do as they play and roll on the floor with the dogs, but _meaning_ it. For a moment he had truly thought it a dragon, and then perhaps some joke of the gods, part one thing and part the other.

When he had looked again, it had possessed the curious sexlessness of very small children, long red-brown hair tangled in the sea wind but not even as matted as the beards of some warriors, grubby only as all children are, with grass stains across its hands and arms, and a smudge of dirt on its face as there would be on the face of any child left to its own devices. Pale human skin scattered with freckles had vanished into a patchwork of mismatched fur, worn over faded and stained fabric or holding it together, a jumble of dark earth colors like an animal near-invisible in the woods.

Creature or child, it had bristled with fear, and for a moment Ragnar had thought that the dragon, hissing and snarling and growling as it was, was hunting it. He had reached out to defend it, to reassure the child that it was safe and that he would not let the dragon harm it.

Only then had he realized that it was _him_ the child feared, that the dragon-screams of defiance the gesture provoked were coming, impossibly, from the child-creature's throat. It had raised a small but calloused hand between them, not reaching out but as if to claw and slash, and he had seen hatred in its eyes.

The fear he can understand. Ragnar is a big man, and he has frightened children before, coming upon them unexpected; or deliberately, telling some story to his nephews and their mob of interchangeable friends to make them shriek and shiver with terrified delight. The dragon he can understand – every Viking in the north knows how to fight dragons; the beasts are as inevitable as winter, and as welcome. But what mad chance could have brought the two together, he cannot figure. If the dragon had not been hunting the child, how had both dragon and child come to be there?

There had been a woman once, in his village, who had claimed to keep a bear for a pet. She had not been the first to try such a thing – there was a story of a man who had tamed a lynx from a kitten, a story Ragnar had heard from his grandmother, and he will gladly kill in honest battle any man who calls his grandmother a liar. And there are tribes, far away, who call birds from the sky like dogs, hunting with them and beside them; these marvels Ragnar has seen for himself.

The woman had walked into the woods with food and followed the beast to its lair, and for months she had sat near the den and walked in the footsteps of the bear, singing to it, gradually and carefully getting closer and closer until one day she had laid a hand upon it and groomed away a tuft of fur from the living bear. When winter had come she had ventured into the bear's den, close enough to lie beside it as it slept, and she had reemerged declaring herself a priestess of the great bear, the peaceful and gentle protector, or so she claimed, of their people, for he had been tamed through her magic.

She had spent much of the winter with the sleeping bear, emerging only to accept tributes and petitions from the believers her accomplishment had earned her.

When spring came Ragnar had found her dead, her body broken and torn and shredded, discarded like the offal of a butchered deer, and the bear's new cubs had played with the trinkets she had collected as the due of a priestess.

He has never heard of anyone who has tried to tame a dragon, and certainly no child could do so. Certainly no child so strange and wild and mad.

What had it been then, if not a child? An elvish changeling, in the form of _almost_ a child? The monstrous offspring of beast and man, an abomination? Some whim of the shapeshifter, tiring of changing only his own form and reaching out to transform a wild beast, to watch with amusement the bewilderment of Vikings?

Or can dragons now take on the shape of children, then? Is this some new wickedness of the beasts that sink ships and burn villages and hunt men? Will he pick up a child, one day, only to have it transform into a beast in his arms? Will his nephews play with strangers who become dragons and devour them?

Surely such things are impossible.

He could almost believe it a vision, of too much steep autumn sunlight in his eyes. Certainly no one among his comrades will believe his tale. They had seen the dragon flee the ship and fly away, but when he told them of the little dragon-like child with it, that had leapt to its back as gracefully and as surefooted as their captain to the deck of her ship, they had laughed. They had not known they had brought along a _skald_ , they had teased him, and urged him to tell them another such tale of monstrous children come out of the sea to haunt their ship. Only the breaching of a cask of plundered mead, and another soon after, and the lighting of the bonfire, to the accompaniment of a raiding song, had deterred the most mocking; even his glowering retreat to the edge of the firelight had failed to silence them.

If he had not seen them himself, Ragnar too would not believe his own tale. He too would be singing the rowing song that had driven them through the night to ambush the village that had not looked for raiders so early in the morning, for their sentries had seen nothing on the ocean as the long autumn night had closed in; he too would be making up new verses and twisting old ones to celebrate their achievement and tease particular friends and longtime rivals both.

His eyes, too, would be blinded by firelight and distracted by the promise of either food, in the roasting of it, or spectacle, in the failure to do so well. He would be looking inward, away from the dark ocean and the ship with her cargo of plunder. Safely beached as she is, there are still sentries on watch, excluded from the meal and the mead and the singing by their poor chance in the casting of lots. They are watching the ocean from their posts on the sea rocks and the peak of the mast, in case the raiders were followed away.

They burned the ships in harbor there, save for the best, sent off homewards by a different sea-road under the care of a prize crew; should the villagers learn to walk on water and outrun a fine Viking longboat, only then may they seek revenge. And while the captain does not believe that word of their conquest will have spread to their rivals already, there is always the chance, she says, that the prize crew should cross paths with another crew gone a-viking and be unable to resist the urge to boast.

She is a wise enough captain to know that they will do so and think no less of them – that is a beautiful ship she has entrusted them with and she too, perhaps, would boast. Ragnar would have her at his back in any battle; she calls herself Elva Spearwife, for she is assuredly, as she likes to say, laughing, no shield-maiden. The weapon sings in her hand like a lover, regardless, and the ship leaps as keenly at her command.

Banished by the mockery of his crewmates to the edge of the camp as he is, though, he looks outward. Without the fire in his eyes he sees instead the shadows moving on deck where there should be none.

Still stung by the taunts of his crewmates, Ragnar fixes his eyes on the movement as he would the threatening promise of a storm on the horizon. He rises to his feet in silence, taking up his own windlass bow and the brutal short arrows it fires, and moves across the sand with the confidence of a man who has navigated the deck of a ship in such storms; next to that chaos there is nothing on this open beach to catch his feet and betray his movement.

The sentry nearest the fire is hungry; he is watching the roasting meat and the roasting of Thorfinn, with words meant to scorch and a new verse working its way into the rowing song to celebrate his valiant deeds of cooking his boot by accident on the edge of the flame, and of disguising venison as coals so that their enemies and rivals will never think to steal it. It is a simple thing for Ragnar to put himself between sentry and fire, signaling him to silence as the warrior joins him on his perch.

Ragnar is perhaps a shade out of temper; he grabs the sentry's chin and turns his head by force to look at the ship, fixing his hand over the youth's jaw to prevent him from making a noise and startling the intruders away.

For intruders they are, and Ragnar is vindicated; the sinuous deeper shadow, darkness in the night, is the black dragon, and at its feet there is a smaller shape.

The big man hand-signals _wait_ and _ambush_ with his free hand, waiting until the sentry nods his head – with difficulty – before he lets the young man go.

All of the other sentries but one he can reach on foot, and to a warrior not one is watching the ship herself; at best they are watching the sea, at worst the fire. The last has the watch on the peak of the mast, a watch Ragnar is glad he has never had to fill. The Spearwife puts her agile shieldmaidens and younger warriors on the heights, not men grown to their full strength.

The last sentry Ragnar signals with brief flashes of firelight reflected off a shard of bronze mirror, catching the attention of the half-grown girl wrapped in the furled canvas of the sail for warmth. He then flashes the same messages of _wait_ and _ambush_ , pointing towards the deck of the ship and hoping that her eyes are keen enough to see the moving, but silent, shadows.

In an ambush there is no shout to herald the attack; they are waiting for Ragnar to fire his windlass bow and they will strike with sling and spear and bow in his wake, surrounding the intruders and hemming them in until a weapon finds its mark.

He waits, as the ghosts of the light signals burn to ashes in his eyes and fade, letting the starlight and bright moonlight and the edges of the bonfire take over until he can see his targets most clearly.

If the child-creature on the open deck, lurking still and silent and lying in wait near-invisibly – to attack? to hunt his crewmates as they return to the ship, drunken and sated and unwary? – is some creation of the trickster, it is a cunning one. Perhaps he will not mind it being sent back to him.

Ragnar feels the eager tension of the windlass bow against his shoulder and sights on the movement in the darkness. He thinks of the dragon's roars and its fangs; of the hatred in the child-creature's eyes and the dragon-screech in its throat, and imagines it grown to some more monstrous form and hunting his nephews and their small silly friends.

A wave moves the ship as if she were breathing, before she settles again into the sand, and in that stillness Ragnar looses the first arrow.

* * *

Toothless has settled at his beloved-companion's side in a resting crouch, jaw on the dragon-boy's shoulder and back, and through this touch he can feel the barest quiver of a purr, held back so that they will be hidden in the night. From this he knows that Hiccup is all but choking on his wonder, on the purr that longs to tear its way out of his throat and shake him from nose to paws, and on the desire to cry aloud with the joy of it as he examines the strange and marvelous picture-thing.

There is no warning – no snarl, no roar, no flame, no sound of wind across wings as an enemy dives – when their careful sneaking silence is broken by a hum and a _snap_. Toothless is a hunter – he spots the movement, all his attention on it in an instant, and he recognizes the bite of a weapon-that-flies, biting into the ship so close to them that it is close enough to touch and so quick that it is still humming its anger.

Confused and disoriented, the dragon-boy leaps to all his paws, recoiling from the human weapon, and cries out an alarm call, a dragonish sound of fear and panic, confused more than hurt. The sound enrages the black dragon, and he too is on his feet as they move together, huddling together to be smaller as they hide from their unknown enemy.

Human weapons _hiss_ and bite into the dead wood of the ship, blind in the dark but so many of them, so sharp! Toothless roars his anger as his partner-companion cowers at his side. When he looks now he can see many humans around the ship, looking towards it.

The black dragon is angry, yes, but he is more frightened for his companion, Hiccup who is half himself. He does not think about it at all as he crouches to the ground of the ship, concealing the dragon-boy beneath his body and his wings. Had he thought about it, he might have reasoned that Hiccup is _his_ to protect, and Hiccup is smaller, and he cannot see as well in the dark.

He does not. He thinks only _mine!_ and _no!_ and _danger!_

But they escaped from this ship once before when it was light and they can do so again. They have only to fly away, and they will be far away soon.

Toothless raises his head from beneath the shelter of his mantled wings and roars in a breath that screams out again as blasting fire and tears into a cluster of humans on the beach, striking back even as they strike at him. One of their weapons nips his shoulder and he shrieks at them all, turning as if to drop the unbitten shoulder to his dragon-boy before fear commands him to stand over Hiccup and keep him protected beneath folded wings.

Part of him wants to tuck his tail under and hide, to surrender and beg as he would in a fight with another dragon bigger than him and stronger and faster, but another part flames and screams and leaps towards the battle with its fangs out hungry for the attack. Part of him feels cornered, with human weapons falling all around them like hail or the spikes of a blue-spikes cousin, and another part feels too exposed, with nowhere to run or hide, pinned down in the open in the territory of humans, and all these parts fight with each other inside him even as he fights the enemies all around.

If they can only get away into the air they will be safe, but Toothless cannot stop hovering over his dragon-boy companion, protecting him from the deadly rain of spikes and stones. His fear is keeping them both on the ground as much as the spikes he can see fly above them. But if they had leapt then those spikes would have struck them, he realizes, and he turns one eye up to look for threats from above even as he spits another blast of flame at the flicker of light on the bared metal of a sharp weapon, an easy target.

Movement there draws his gaze, and through the darkness he sees a smaller human perched on the trees that are part of the ship, hidden behind the great leaves but moving now, raising a weapon to throw down on them. There is a light in its eyes that is more than human firelight or the blaze of Toothless' own flames. It stares like a hunter, eager to pounce. The sharp blade on the tip of its weapon is like a dragon's tail; it will bite much harder than the spikes, and all of the different parts of Toothless inside yowl _threat!_

He rears to his back feet, screaming, and spins, twisting and coiling, and blasts the tree below the paws of the human where it balances on a branch. The flash makes it turn away, howling, and the fire tears into the tree like claws until it explodes, pieces of it flying as quick as small fierce dragons. The hunter falls, crying out in an angry high voice, and the tree falls with it, screaming in the deep moan of the death of a tree.

Pieces of tree knock aside the flying spikes and stones from the humans still on the shore, and the trunk of it crunches into the ship. Even Toothless' night eyes cannot see all the pieces as they scatter and flee, and the ground shakes at its fall, roaring its protest. Pieces of ship and the human things the dragon-pair scattered across the deck fly too, breaking and stumbling.

For a moment dragons and humans go still, assessing the new battlefield. The ship groans like the water-cousin it reminded Toothless and Hiccup of, whimpering from the pain in its flanks and back. Waves splash and churn, disturbed in their breathing by all the broken things falling into them. The human hunter who had hidden in the tree pushes aside pieces of tree and ship, faltering and reeling, and shrieks its anger at its fall.

 _Now!_ Toothless whistles urgently, looking away and down to the dragon-boy at his feet, protected beneath his chest. Now they can escape, now while the humans are distracted, now they can fly away, as quick as lightning strikes and as agile, veering and diving and soaring so that their enemy cannot follow them home!

When he drops his shoulder again, Hiccup does not leap to it as he should. He is crouched on the ground of the ship, head down and all his weight on his clever front paws as he does not like to do, and Toothless knows at once that something is wrong.

Is he hurt, did a spike bite him, what is _wrong_? Toothless has tried to protect his beloved-companion but he has failed, and now guilt and fear fight over the pieces of him inside, defeating them all at once. Terrified, the black dragon whimpers an almost pure sound of panic and fright tinged with his love for his Hiccup- _self_ , lowering his nose to the ground to place it under Hiccup's jaw. He raises his head slowly and carefully even as he shakes with fear, bringing his companion's eyes up to meet his.

He does not smell of blood – there is the raw fresh smell of injury and torn meat in the air, but it is from the human hunter, and this Toothless cares about not at all. Instead Toothless reads from the wide dark eyes that do not look at him, and the way that he pulls away, setting his paws back down as if he might fall, that Hiccup is dizzy. When the bigger dragon noses at him he yelps at the lightest touch on his skull, whining.

Toothless recognizes _stunned_ – they play rough, they are reckless, and it is not unusual for Hiccup to be hurt in a fall or a slip or a shove. Something must have struck him, as Toothless reared up so stupidly, leaving him exposed as everything fell all around them.

He knows that the _stunned_ will go away soon.

He knows too that they cannot fly this way.

The flying-with helps them fly together but it is not perfect. Even when Hiccup is properly awake there is always a risk that he might fall, although Toothless suspects that Hiccup _likes_ it that way, likes being part of the flight and balancing between flight and falling, shifting his weight and moving his grip on the flying-with and the pressure of his back paws tangled in the cords and against Toothless' sides, reacting to changes in the wind and the movements of the air and the acrobatics of the fearlessly agile black dragon as they spin and turn and veer.

And it is wonderful, when they are flying free, but now the feral boy is blinking and shaking as if he has been sleeping so deeply that dreams still hold him and are trying to drag him down into their bottomless waters. Dreams can be shaken away but _stunned_ cannot, _stunned_ can only be waited for.

But they cannot wait here!

Toothless shudders, trying to think past the fear and the horror and the confusion of having half of himself reeling and lost even as enemies surround them and attack. They think best when they think together – not as the king does, inside the skulls of his dragons – but reacting to each other, _working_ together, cleverer than anyone, and most clever of all together. Toothless _needs_ the comfort of his other half's presence, awake and intelligent and inventive, but guilt bites him deeply and draws hot blood.

If they cannot fly, then they can still run.

It is a stupid idea.

Hiccup would like it.

They are surrounded by grounded human weapons and lost things and bits of the corpse of the tree, hidden a bit but not for long. Toothless noses at his companion, yelping a simple instruction low and urgent. _Up!_ he urges, _need you need up up up now!_ If his dragon-boy cannot ride then Toothless will have to carry him in his jaws – Hiccup is still small enough to be carried that way by many dragons, although he does not like it – and it will be hard to escape as quickly.

Hiccup whimpers, turning away and closing his eyes against the bright flares of still-burning fires, but he obeys, not in a leap to the black dragon's shoulders but a clumsy crawl. Toothless waits impatiently and in fear as the dragon-boy paws at the straps of the flying-with, securing himself more out of habit than understanding.

 _Good?_ Toothless croons, trying to see but knowing he cannot. Usually it is a good thing that Hiccup rides on his shoulders, in his blind spot, but sometimes not being able to completely see his partner is infuriating.

When he feels more than hears Hiccup mumble agreement, he breathes in ready to fire and they _run_ , not away, over the sea, but into a leap over the flank of the ship and soaring as if ready to dive down into the teeth of their enemies. They are spread out like hunters, and their prey is cornered, but there is an open space in their trap that they do not know about and _there_ the dragons can escape.

Toothless flames, hot and furious, not at the humans, but at their fire, alighting on the shore and racing low and steady in the wake of the blast as quickly as he can, following it as the humans recoil away from the heat and the light and the bite of his battle-fire.

Human voices shriek and roar, discordant and mixed together, as he charges past them. From the sides of his eyes he can see many human faces turned towards them, staring, jaws open in anger or fear or shock, he does not know, but none of them have turned a weapon towards them yet.

It is, for a moment, wonderful.

The fire on the shore cannot flee. It can only stand and fight. The two flames become one brawling blaze with a great roar, louder than many dragons, and the pieces of the fire scatter still burning away from the battle.

Toothless races for this gap, aware always of the smaller dragon-child on his back, who has no scales and instead has gentle paws with no claws and smooth soft skin and fur of his own that will burn if they get too close and stay too long. The heat of the scattering flames lick against Toothless' scales, warm after the cold of the autumn night and the ice of fear inside. Dangerous as this trick is, it feels like dragon-fire which means safety and home.

His instinct is to leap, to catch the heat of the fire under his wings and ride the thermals up into the night, one sharp snap of speed and flight, but he cannot. He slows only slightly as he picks his way through the hot ashes, warm against his scales but too hot for the angry humans regrouping behind them, roaring and snarling even as they blink and flail against the fire-blast. The black dragon chooses a safe path until there is no fire ahead. All the human sounds are behind them as Toothless slips into the forest.

It is glorious to leave the screams and rages of humans behind. After the brightness of the flames and the explosions of battle-fire the night is soothing, cool and dark and safe like the stones of a well-known cave that has been rasped smooth by the touch of many dragons. It feels as if it might be a good hiding-place, to wait here in the darkness that humans cannot see through, but it is bright and clear to the black dragon, for he is looking very hard indeed.

Still Toothless can feel the tension of fear running through his body, making his wings twitch and his steps erratic. The sick sour taste of it is in his mouth and throat, of human foods turned bitter because of the ashes and flame, and even when he breathes in the night air to wash it away he can still smell the fire at his tail.

But on his back he can hear the smallest of confused and disoriented trills.

The black dragon scans the forest, crushing plants underfoot and flicking aside stones as he pads on. _You?_ he croons to his beloved-companion, anxious. _Love-you love-you Hiccup-beloved hurt hurt worried hurt bad hate angry danger danger you hurt love-you!_

Instead of responding as Toothless hoped he would, Hiccup hides his face against the nape of Toothless' neck and breathes very carefully. He holds on tightly not to the flying-with but to Toothless' scales, staying as close as possible. The _stunned_ is fading, Toothless knows, but it still holds him tightly.

They do not have time, Toothless knows, frightened. The human sounds that had faded as they walked on are growing louder again. They are being hunted! In the air they leave no trail except for scent, but on the ground they can be followed.

Almost instantly a stone ricochets off a tree near them, not falling knocked away by the paws of a wild creature but thrown hard and quick and cruel by human weapons. They cannot see in the darkness the way Toothless can, but their enemies can throw many stones. There are always more.

Humming _reassurance_ to his dragon-boy, and hearing _uneasiness_ and _fear_ winding their way into his voice, the black dragon glances over his shoulder and sees humans through the trees, carrying fire and weapons. They have not given up.

It is not like a fight in the nest. Toothless and Hiccup often get into trouble there and make flock-mates angry at them. They thieve scraps of prey-fur and pretty stones from nests, and food from unwary cousins. They work together. Hiccup will distract their target from whatever their cousin has that they want. Toothless will creep around where that cousin cannot see him and snatch it, and be away as soon as their flock-mate realizes that they are playing a trick, his dragon-boy fleeing in another direction so that they cannot both be chased at once. Often their flock-mate will hesitate, unsure which to pursue and waiting too long, and so catches neither.

They have a game where they race across the nest from one place to another, competing just to play and to strut and preen and cackle in pride and temporary triumph, and a good trick on each other is to disturb resting dragons that will stir and spread their wings and roar and snap at the little one already past them and away, and will be very unhappy when another young dragon bowls through them in his partner's wake. That is a good distraction and even though Toothless can fly it is very hard to win when it is Hiccup in the lead and who has surprised their flock-mates into action like seagulls startled from their scavenging when the dragon-pair races into their midst to chase them all away in great confusion.

Sometimes they choose a place that is not their sleeping-in nest and decide that this is their space now, and play at chasing away all others, snapping at the noses of hatchlings and young dragons that try to intrude, laughing through their snarls as others join the game and trespass just to make the little dragon-boy and the black dragon run from one place to another, trying to drive them out, over and over again until someone tires of the game.

None of those games and those tricks have ever ended in a pursuit that does not _stop_. They have fled from predators that pounce but cannot pounce again before the dragons can flee, and wild beasts defending their dens or their kills or their small ones, but always once they have run then they are away. In the nest they can hide from annoyed cousins, but no one hunts a flock-mate they are angry with – this nest is their home, their rival can only hide for so long.

Nothing _chases_ as relentlessly as these humans do!

Toothless snarls as he runs, as quickly as he can through the confining trees, wishing that Hiccup was recovered enough to fly, for while he is stirring and Toothless can feel that he is more awake from the tension in his body, he knows that even if there was clear sky overhead they could not yet safely get away. And there is no clear sky! The trees are not so close that the bigger dragon cannot move through them quickly enough to keep the humans at his tail, but they loom over him like the stones of a too-small cave.

He needs them to stop chasing, just for a little while. Toothless needs them to stop throwing stones all around – although they may throw stones at each _other_ , which he can hear has happened, because humans are fighting with each other now – and shooting spikes into the darkness that come too close. His black scales hide him in the night but he is moving where nothing else is. Everything else that lives in this forest is hiding, but Toothless has no den here to retreat into.

On his back, Hiccup snarls, and lifts a paw away from Toothless' scales to swipe at his eyes, sitting up and pushing his fur away from his face. He whistles a curious question, a thin and frightened _what?_ sound.

 _Careful,_ Toothless snaps at him, a movement of eyes and jaw and the flick of his ear-flaps down and back as if huddling and hiding, and breathes _hush_.

Their pursuers have heard the small noise, and a spike flies through the space between trees and buries itself in another one, humming furiously. Hiccup ducks, hiding his face against Toothless' neck, and the sensation with the sound and the memory of a chasing game in the nest give Toothless an idea.

The buzz of the spike sounds remarkably like the buzz of bees, and they need a trick, a trick to make humans stop chasing them.

 _Hide!_ Toothless signals his rider, and he buzzes the same imitation of _bees_ that Hiccup had used earlier to draw the bigger dragon's attention to the hive, turning towards the sound of the ocean not far.

On his back he feels Hiccup turn to look behind them at the fire-light visible through the trees as it moves in the paws of humans – if their enemies set the forest aflame, will they _still_ chase them? He thrums _confusion what what us bees fear threat_ which becomes a deep low snarl of _anger_ for a moment before falling silent entirely.

Then he cries a soft sound of _realization_ and the edge of _amusement_.

A moment later he taps a paw on the side of Toothless' neck to signal _ready_ , settling himself into the flying-with and bracing for flight without having to be told.

Despite the roars of humans, despite the danger, despite the fear that grows from being hunted, Toothless feels his jaw drop in a dragon's smile. Hiccup is back with him.

Toothless is _fearless_ now.

He runs swiftly now, feeling his companion shift and grip and run with him, reflecting his movements in his own body, keeping his balance again, awake and alive. The black dragon remembers exploring in the woods as the sun went down, and begins to recognize where they are. Although Toothless is unfamiliar with the concept of a map, he can hold one in his mind as a memory of a place and how to get to that place and its relationship to other places.

One last sprint, and he can see on the far side of the clearing at the edge of the forest the moonlight on the waves, hidden some by clouds but still bright. The clouds are a welcome sight – when they fly away they can hide in the clouds and not have to go a long way home. Humans cannot fly but the instinct to not let an enemy follow them back to the nest has its claws deep in his memory, older than thought.

Now he turns, tired of running, ready to fight. He opens his jaw and snaps out his fangs in a snarl this time, and roars.

He roars _danger_ and _threat_ and _defensive_ , _angry_ and _scared_ and, under that, edges of _can't-catch-me_ like a small clever paw reaching into a nest where no one can see.

Tension runs through his body like waiting to pounce, even though enemies are trying to pounce on him, and it echoes through Hiccup as well where the dragon-boy waits on his shoulders, all fear and excitement tangled together like the guts of prey, blood-hot and sinuous and mixed together inside.

A dragon might know this was a trick. It might see the signals, of wings spread just _so_ , ready to fly and not braced to fight, and only the end of his tail twitching, held all but still – one of their family would know the light in Toothless' eyes as mischief, not rage or fear. A dragon might see the signals that are the way Toothless holds his paws, resting his weight on his back feet and ready to spring away.

They might see Hiccup peeking through the edges of his long head-fur, eyes wide and paws clinging tightly to the cords of the flying-with, as they face down their enemies, but together, always together.

When a flock of humans stumbles out of the forest, leaves and sticks and the sap of the blood of trees caught in their head-furs and the furs on their bodies, they see what Toothless wants them to see – a dragon at bay, not flying, not running, panting as if tired, head down and eyes closing.

They charge, weapons raised and voices crying anger and fear and eagerness to kill.

And Toothless leaps, not at them but _up_.

His wings catch the air and the first downbeat is a delight so great it cannot even be cried aloud; there is no sound big enough to sing of it.

His tail catches the broken hive as it sweeps past, cutting under their bodies to balance them as they fly up and up into the darkness, and the song of that strike is not a dragon's song. It is the hum that becomes a buzz that becomes a _roar_ of outraged bees.

The bees are too small to see in the darkness, but there are many of them and they make a cloud that has come down to the ground, full of anger and stings and hunting for the enemy that has threatened their nest.

Hiccup and Toothless are too quick and soon too high for the bees to find them, but _humans cannot fly._

Now _humans_ are chased through an unfamiliar forest by an enemy that will not relent and that cannot be hidden from, stumbling through the dark woods and unable to escape as the stings of bees snap and bite at them.

The dragon-pair sees none of it, and hears only echoes.

They are already far away, safe in the dark and the sky. Clouds shelter them even from the light of the moon, and the sea breezes fill Toothless' wings as he glides.

From his shoulders he hears Hiccup laugh as dragons do, all trills and chirps and a _hough hough hough_ sound, like coughing but not quite. The dragon-boy reaches out to pet him, stretching as far as he can to brush a paw up and down Toothless' skull, until the wind shoves them unexpectedly and he slips, off balance.

He catches himself immediately, but Toothless shrugs his shoulders, rolling one eye back to glare. The black dragon will not forget as quickly the blank look in his companion's eyes when the ship-tree fell, or the fear that goes with _stunned_ and leaves them separate, cut in two and unable to communicate. The guilt still bites him for allowing his partner-companion to be injured when he was trying to protect him, and the black dragon hides from it, turning away and lowering his head. When he takes them out of the glide and sets a course towards home, orienting himself on the stars unconsciously, his guilt is reflected in the beat of his wings and the breaths he draws.

Toothless cannot hide the way he feels – not from Hiccup – but he hopes the dragon-boy will not notice in the excitement that lingers in challenging humans and escaping.

Hiccup signals _stop_ or perhaps _no_ , the lightest of taps against his scales, half-scolding and commanding but familiar. He rests his paw against Toothless' side as if he could hold down the breaths that still come too fast in fear and the rush of battle.

Toothless whimpers an objection, defending the feeling that bites at him even though it hurts. _You you hurt you good love-you worry worry mine you!_

 _Good you good you brave proud me proud you good love-you_ , Hiccup contradicts, insisting. He turns his cheek to the black dragon's scales, purring a deep true sound of affection and contentment.

The dragon-boy stays still for a while, resting and thinking and watching the stars above and the waves below, and feeling the steadying heartbeat of the dragon who is as much a part of him as his own heart, who _is_ his heart. Toothless' signals change as they fly, from _anxious_ and _guilty_ and _afraid_ becoming _contentment_ and _relief_ and _joy_.

He is frightened still by the humans who had chased them, but distantly, like a nightmare that is fading and half-forgotten. He has seen into a world that is alien and threatening, driving him and his beloved-companion away even as it promises wonders. He is disappointed to have lost the beautiful thing of colors, and angry a bit at the humans who had driven them away before they could steal it and taken it away to be theirs, but amused at the outcome of the chase and Toothless' cleverness in leading the humans into a trap set by dragons. In some distant way he cannot describe, he is aware of the irony in this and pleased by what he sees as the justice of it. and he is tired with the deep true exhaustion of excitement and restlessness and cold quick-striking fear all tumbled together and used well.

It does not occur to him that if they had been hurt, if the humans had captured the dragon-pair and killed them, that the flock would have lost another of their young ones, so soon after the death of Smallest, because it would not be the same. There would have been a reason, and they chose the danger, and the two young dragons who are a single person are not hatchlings newly born. They are old enough to hear the voice of the great king and to face all the many dangers of their wild lives with only their own courage and fierceness and cleverness, without being protected by anyone else.

They could have stayed in the nest and grieved but instead they explored and found new amazing things and escaped danger, and that is how things should be. The feral boy understands this deep inside, although he could not put it into words even if he spoke a different language. He is simply too young. But he _knows_ , and does not have to explain this understanding, even to himself, when he and his dragon-half can live it.

He and Toothless are reckless and daring, taking impulsive risks and doing foolish things, but they are brave and adventurous and inventive and _that_ is how they know they are alive and themselves together.

That is how he fights, when bigger dragons push him aside or ignore him or snarl at him when fights break out in the nest, as fights do often. He and Toothless are smaller than many dragons, but they are clever and quick instead. They do not fight dragons much bigger than they are by leaping at hard scales or being swiped at by sharp claws or wrestling with heavy-thick cousins. They fly swift and agile until their rival cannot catch them and tires of the chase and the quarrel, or they think of a way to make the fight a foolish thing because there are more interesting things to do.

Part of him imagines that death and danger, too, are enemies that can be fought in their own way, baited and teased and then driven away by cleverness.

They can defy death just as they would defy a bully or an enemy, by being braver and cleverer and today, Hiccup decides – despite the ache of his skull and the sick taste of fear still fading from his throat and the loss of the pretty colorful toy – they have fought well. They have snarled back at death and chased it away from them.

He is not at _all_ sorry, except for the fear that Toothless felt. That alone he regrets.

It will be a good story to tell their friends when winter comes again and the flock does not leave the nest but curls up warm all together and dozes. For now there are bright scattered stars far above them as Toothless soars high above the thinning clouds, and the dark water and the floating ice and the stars-in-ice that vanish when pounced on below. There is the cold of the night air in the feral boy's eyes and in his chest as he breathes with the heat from their heart-fires inside. There is the sanctuary of home and the flock to return to, the scent of the open sky, and each other.

Death has taken Smallest, but it cannot have Toothless and his beloved dragon-boy.

* * *

 _-end-_

 _thanks for reading – Le'letha_


End file.
